FDA Bites the E-cigarette Regulation Bullet
It’s no public health secret that tobacco use continues to be a dominant cause of preventable disease and death in the US. While the trend has been encouraging (Arizona’s smoking rate is down to 17%), there’s still much work to be done- and continued efforts to provide creative and effective ways to help adult smokers kick the habit are a [...]
Abortion Clinic Inspections Bill
We license and inspect abortion clinics in AZ. Due to a court settlement agreement (unlike other health care institutions we license) we’re currently required to get an administrative search warrant before conducting an unannounced inspection of an abortion clinic. For a routine compliance inspection, we need to give them 10 days-notice. On Tuesday, the Governor signed HB 2284, which (when [...]
Novel Group B Strep Intervention for Babies
Group B Streptococcus bacteria is a leading cause of infection and death within the first week of life. Each year about 40 infants less than 1-week old get early-onset group B strep disease in Arizona. The bacteria can cause life-threatening infections like sepsis (infection of the blood), pneumonia (infection in the lungs), and meningitis (infection of the fluid and lining [...]
5 Years of Behavioral Health Innovation Paying Dividends (Part II)
Over the next couple of weeks I’ll continue reflecting about some of the innovative strategies that we’ve implemented with our behavioral health community partners over the last several years to improve the health status of folks with a serious mental illness. Last week I wrote about the Integrated Health Homes initiative. Another success has been improvements in our Crisis Response [...]
Compliance v. Enforcement
Those of you in Public Health Licensing have heard me talk about the difference between compliance and enforcement more than once. They’re 2 different things. Compliance means that a licensed healthcare, residential or childcare facility meets our standards and expectations. Enforcement is an action that we occasionally take in order to get a facility into compliance. In other words, our [...]
Regulatory Reform Improves Health & Wellness in AZ
Three years ago we made the commitment to overhaul the way we regulate Arizona’s 5,500 licensed healthcare facilities. Our goal was to move from the existing prescriptive regulations to a new set of outcome-based rules. The idea was to shift from the former 2-dimensional standards to a deeper set of 3-dimensional regulations. The final regulations that we’re publishing at the end [...]